poems | Metaphor

We can hear him coming, shoes crunching
on the hardpack and sparse gravel. And just
above the push and pull of his breathing,
the thin and urgent whisper of a prayer.
Something about mercy, but nothing
to explain his coming through the juniper
green and pale gray chaparral.
Just out for a walk, to clear his mind.

He will not stop to talk, but looks
at the stones ahead of him, at the sky
gone to dishwater in the afternoon,
then away at the boats where they move
to their moorings for another night
with no rain or wind. For a moment,
everything is quiet here and quickly fading.
A great blue heron sails for home.
A woman walks a massive dog.

Our man can’t be worried for Rottweilers,
or fear the train that rises up and lunges,
bleating, from the darkening grove of cypress,
and pounds away behind a hill.
He has his own concerns.
Some people, even in his love for them,
seem bent on pain. He tries to warn them,
but they just won’t hear.
So he has a worried mind for life itself,
for all the cracking crystal bones of it.

He is alone, except for you and me
and the trees, and the last of the sun.
A sliver of hot coal, fused to the sky
beyond the islands and the sea.
Do you see what he’s doing?
Holding on to all of this, time and place,
to even the rose and saffron dying
in the highest clouds, and all the trees
that fade to charcoal gray.
He holds it all together with his prayers.

At home, he climbs the stairs and listens
to his breathing, step by step. The last cry
of the train has faded now, and everything
is turning toward its end.
The daily round come round again,
and nothing to be done for it but hope.
It leaves him spent and drained, as though
he needed emptying for night to come.
He locks the door behind him, kicks off
his shoes against the baseboard by the rug,
and goes from room to room to light the lights.

Why does it always have to end this way?
He counts his footsteps up and down the hall,
and puts a pot of water on for tea.
He has a hundred books he ought to read,
and concertos for the violin.
If you asked the number of his clocks,
he’d simply shrug and look away.

He does not believe in ghosts, but he
believes in memory. Grandpa comes in
leaning on crutches, after the news
has all been read, to check the locks
and dim the lights. Grandma layers blankets
on the beds. In every room a dog
is keeping watch. They do not speak
or make a sound, though some nights
he thinks he hears an old dog sigh.
His memory has a gift for mimicking the wind.

Lying awake, he thinks of their house
in the long valley, and Christmas, and the fog
that would come before morning.
By dawn the trees would be submerged,
and all the neighbors’ homes were sunken,
gone to God. He loved those mornings,
lost at sea, with scrambled eggs
and Papa with his newspapers.
By noon the sea would melt, give up her dead.

Now he just keeps still and tries to sleep,
and listens to the gently settling house.

The birds wake up at six o’clock;
they’re cheeping in the myrtle hedge.
It’s warm enough this time of year
to make them glad. He sleeps
a little more, and dreams of organizing shadows
into words, then chasing them in panic
through a book. At eight o’clock he eats
two eggs, then shaves and drives to town.

He always signals turns, as if nothing
changes course without a plan. Nothing
veers away and winds up lost, not
if he holds so tightly to the wheel.
And watches how the light comes
smoothly through the glass, not broken
into facets as in a world of quartz.
Such great responsibility, holding on
to everything with tired hands.
Lord have mercy, it is all so much
and gone so fast. He whispers
this prayer for more time,
another chance, and a firm grip
so that all of this will live.